The explosive adoption of Internet technologies over the past 20 years is proof enough of how tremendously we value the connectivity the Internet provides. But as online service providers expand their channels of productivity, convenience, and entertainment, their clients' online footprints inevitably grow larger as well. Unlike actual footprints, however, those digital footprints can morph into fingerprints, leaving Internet users wondering about how deeply their privacy has been compromised by their online activities. Whether it's online retailers tracking shopping behavior, data brokers scooping up and selling profile information that has leaked through social media, or the GPS trail so many smart phone users leave as they move about, consumers and businesses alike have every reason to be concerned about the percolation and collection of their private information through the Internet.
These concerns will only grow—probably exponentially—as service providers inexorably seek to realize the competitive edge that big data analytics promises. For example, life insurance companies are using the big data aggregated in records of applicants' online behavior to gauge life expectancy. After one online reservation broker discovered that the average Mac® user spends more on hotels than the typical PC user, it began steering the Mac® users toward pricier lodgings. Breaches of users' privacy such as these, regardless of whether the damage involved was more imagined or real, spark real recriminations against the providers who minimize the value that users place on privacy.
Between 2009 and 2013, the percentage of Internet users who said they worry about the availability of information about them online them rose from 33% to 50%, according to the Pew Research Center. Pew also reported that nearly 90% of the people they surveyed have tried at least one way, such as clearing tracking cookies or their browser history, to prevent online tracking, and almost 70% said that the law is not doing enough to protect their privacy. As for identity theft, 2013 marked the 14th consecutive year in which that crime was the number-one consumer complaint in the United States, according the Federal Trade Commission.
Even if most users' concerns over Internet privacy are primarily a matter of principle, for victims of crime and political dissidents it can be a matter of life or death. For whistleblowers, it can be a matter of continuing to earn a living. And for businesses, it can be a matter of relying on the Internet to communicate trade secrets. The demand for online privacy has been with us since the 1990s, and it will continue to grow as our dependence on the Internet, and the data sets accessible through it, grows.